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A covered wagon appeared on the first crossroad, moving steadily between rows of elder bushes. The carriage waited its approach. A figure like Zene's sat resting his feet on the tongue behind the old gray and the old white. "It's our wagon," said Robert Day.
Robert Day began to consider the part of Ohio through which his caravan was passing, a weird and unwholesome region, full of shivering delights. While the landscape lay warm, glowing and natural around him, it was luxury to turn cold at Zene's night-peril. "I couldn't go to sleep," continued Zene, "and I kind of kept my eye on the only window there was."
He half-stood on the tongue, to bring his legs down on a level with Zene's, and enjoyed the jolting in every piece of his backbone. He had had a surfeit of woman-society. Even the horsey smell of Zene's clothes was found agreeable. And above all, he wanted to talk about J. D. Matthews, and tell the terrors of a bottomless ford and a house with a strange-sounding cellar.
And then comes word from the other direction of an old man bein' knocked on the head when he opened his door. It wouldn't seem to you there'd be enough money at a toll-gate to make it an object," said the woman, looking at Zene's cross eyes with unconcealed disfavor. "But folks of that kind don't want much of an object." "They love to rob," suggested Bobaday, enjoying himself.
That's a true story," vouched Zene, snapping his whip-lash at Johnson, "but your grandmarm wouldn't like for me to tell it to you. Such things ain't fit for children to hear." Robert Day felt glad that Zene's qualms of repentance always came after the offence instead of before, and in time to prevent the forbidden tale.
"We'd need the cover off of the wagon to do that, and kittles," said Grandma Padgett, "and dried meat and butter and cake and things out of the wagon." "Maybe Zene's back in the woods campin' somewhere," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "And he has his gun, and can shoot birds too." "No, he's goin' along the right road and expectin' us to follow.
"Movers' young ones have to wear calico," he continued, "and their lame pap goes lippity-clink around after them." "He thinks Zene's our father!" exclaimed aunt Corinne, blazing at the affront she received. "Don't mind him," said Robert, slowly. "He's the hostler's boy, and used to staying in the stable. He doesn't know how to behave when they let him into the house."
He run right past the straw pile, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I had him by the hitch-strap it was draggin' and hoppin' against the straw, I jumped on him." "Jack Robinson," Zene's hearer tried half-audibly. "Then what? Did the man and woman run?" "I makes old Gray jump the straw pile, and I comes at them just like I rose out of the ground!
He was a quiet, singular fellow, halting in his walk on account of the unevenness of his legs; but faithful to the family as either Boswell or Johnson. Grandma Padgett having brought him up from a lone and forsaken child, relied upon all the good qualities she discovered from time to time, and she saw nothing ludicrous in Zene. But aunt Corinne and Bobaday never ceased to titter at Zene's "marm."
"This is the very last culvert," sighed Corinne, relieved, as they rumbled across one and entered the village where they were to stop over night. It was already dusk. The town dogs were beginning to bark, and the candles to twinkle. Zene's wagon was unhitched in front of the tavern, and this signified that the carriage-load might confidently expect entertainment.
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